Hiya, new here!
I recorded directly in Audacity for the majority of the day yesterday.
The person I recorded is no longer available to sit down and do it again.
Everything went fine until today when I kept working on the project. Audacity crashes and upon restart offer a restore-option.
I chose “Yes” and the project opens up. But every track has a FLAT sound wave. No sound whatsoever…
I had saved the project not too long before the crash so I close the application without saving anything to this recovered version and open up the version I worked with before the crash.
But the sound waves are all flatlined there as well. But the right order of the tracks and so on are intact.
It also shows a popup upon opening that there are 86 orphan block files.
The folders with all of the .au data files are intact. Around 600-700 .au files spread across three different folders (couldn’t zip and attach these folders as they’re too big). I’ve tried opening some of them in Audacity and can find fragments of the recorded sound. But I have a hard time piecing them all together again.
I’ve looked for a solution in threads here but haven’t been able to solve it and get my project back. I read about the recovery tool but that seems to only work on Windows. And my project name is the same as the data-folder with the .au files (but without “_data” at the end).
The project name in the actual project file when viewed in a text editor is the same as the data folder.
The folder structure is as follows:
Project folder
Project.aup
Data folder
– eff
— d1d
— d1e
— d1f
Mac OS Big Sur 11.5.2
Around 80 GB free HDD space
Audacity version 2.3.2
I really hope the project can be salvaged with some help from a friendly soul! Thank you
The _data folder should be “Glanshammar ljudinspelning till app_data”
Is that what you have?
The “.au” files should be playable in VLC or Foobar2000 (two highly recommended free player apps). I’m guessing that if you try playing some of them, they will be silent. If they are all silent, then I think that’s the end of the road.
I read about the recovery tool but that seems to only work on Windows.
There is a Windows Audacity Version 3 recovery tool produced by jademan. It doesn’t work on the older Audacity Version 2 programs.
It’s good production hygiene to double record important interviews. This was a radio interview I shot at work. The main microphone, sound mixer, and Audacity recorder are on the left. The microphone on the right is the separate backup recorder.
You don’t have to double your microphones and recorders. This is an interview I shot in a restaurant by just laying my phone on the table.
When you finish your Audacity recording, immediately File > Export the sound as a perfect-quality WAV (Microsoft) 16-bit sound file. Raw recording—mistakes and all. This is the protection backup if Audacity fails later.
Audacity 3 series (Audacity 3.0.4 is current) has File > Save Project > Backup Project. This will produce a divorced project file, isolated from the current edit.
Audacity 3 also doesn’t use the split AUP and _DATA system. Everything is in one AUP3 file.
Audacity 2 never produces a backup by itself. Every time you save a Project, it updates the current active Project. It doesn’t give you a separate Project or Step-Back series at each save.
Also you should know that none of the Audacity Projects save UNDO. Once you close Audacity, all the UNDO layers go away.
There are difficult techniques to rescue raw, clean recording project crashes, but nobody has ever rescued an edit. Once Audacity crashes during an edit, that’s the end of the world—unless you have any of those other backups.
Yes, correct. And that folder consists of another folder called “eff” with three other folders inside it with all the .au files.
Good tip about VLC. I’ve imported them into a new Audacity project to play them but it’s kind of a hassle.
A lot of the files are silent yes but some have 6 seconds or so of the recorded session. But there’s no way of knowing if the full recording are actually among all of those files without going through the 600-700 files and try to puzzle them back together right…?
I tried to sort them by “last edited” and could somewhat put the intro of the recording back together but after that a lot of the files where silent and/or out of order it seemed, kinda gave up on the idea of putting it all back together that way.
That works on macOS? I should’ve updated to the latest Audacity version before starting the project but of course I didn’t think about that at the time… Sounds like they improved quite a lot.
When you finish your Audacity recording, immediately > File > Export > the sound as a perfect-quality > WAV (Microsoft) 16-bit > sound file. Raw recording—mistakes and all. This is the protection backup if Audacity fails later.
Oh YES and I thought about that but the idea got lost somewhere during the interview and due to time restraints. But I will always do that from now on, lesson learned the hard way.
There are difficult techniques to rescue raw, clean recording project crashes, but nobody has ever rescued an edit. Once Audacity crashes during an edit, that’s the end of the world—unless you have any of those other backups.
I’ve given up on saving the edit, it wasn’t finished so it wouldn’t be too much of a deal to start over with that. I just want to save the recording if it’s possible. What are those “difficult techniques” and are they worth a shot?
If the audio data (the “.au” files) were OK, and the project was an un-edited recording, then sorting by time/date order is the correct approach (there’s a script somewhere to help with the task). Unfortunately, in your case it seems that most of the .au files are not OK, and you had started editing. Working on the recording puts the .au files out of chronological order, so it’s virtually impossible to reassemble them correctly, Even if you could get them into the correct order, it won’t be much use as you say that most of the au files are silent.
Sadly, I think that project is too badly damaged and beyond repair.
Yeah unfortunately I had started the edit… So that’s why the order and everything is messed up, I see.
Well that’s a real pain… but thanks for your time!
There is a Windows Audacity Version 3 recovery tool produced by jademan. It doesn’t work on the older Audacity Version 2 programs.
That works on macOS?
No. I’m guessing it doesn’t work on Linux, either. Audacity runs on all three computers.
A word on that WAV backup. It is “the mode” to insist that you do the backup as WAV (Microsoft) 32-bit-floating instead of 16-bit. That gives the engineers a warm/fuzzy feeling for its perfection and purity of sound reproduction, but nobody talked to the content producers. 32-floating is a special setting in the export dialog process and you have to think about it. 16-bit is the default, no thinking involved, and it’s fast.
44100, 16-bit stereo is the sound standard of an Audio CD. Many of my client deliverables were 16-bit.
But the right order of the tracks and so on are intact.
